I went to uni to learn. What I discovered about my generation has made me angry and terrified

June 27, 2026 — 5:00am

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University mid-year exams are here, but most of my fellow students of 2026 can be reassured that their futures will not be on the line from a few hours spent in an open hall like the Royal Exhibition Building. Many subjects don’t have exams at all or have “take-home exams”. For students who do have to sit exams, many more will have already secured most of the grades from their bedrooms without having sat a single in-person test.

Completing work at home isn’t inherently a problem. What alarms me is the flagrant, unregulated way that I’m seeing my generation of uni students use artificial intelligence to do the work for them. Students aren’t using AI to think better; they’re using it to avoid thinking at all. Universities say they are discouraging this kind of behaviour, while structuring student assessments in ways that promote it. It’s no wonder academics like Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Marvin Starominski-Uehara are questioning the value of a degree.

I’m no technophobe who believes that ChatGPT is the devil incarnate and that we should all write exams with ballpoint pens. In fact, I’m a dyslexic, first-year arts student who spent the end of year 12 asking ChatGPT for sample exam questions and model answers, which is a useful and legitimate study tool. But I’m frustrated at the unfair way AI is being used.

Every week, I attend tutorials. My experience: the tutor asks a question, kids consult ChatGPT to provide a script for answers; the things we allegedly come to university to hone. Meanwhile, the tutor looks around bleakly at a sea of blank faces behind laptops.

Privately, students discuss which parts of their essays ChatGPT wrote for them, or how it, or Grammarly, or some other AI “proofread” their work and “made it........

© The Sydney Morning Herald